The University of Toronto medical student’s rotation at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre began around July 9, the start of the Muslim holy month.

That meant working unpredictable shifts for as long as 26 hours while fasting from eating and drinking during the day.

The fast-paced hospital environment was already challenging Jabbar’s ability to keep up with colleagues and patients. As a new physician, she felt more “error prone” and said fasting would increase her anxiety on the job.

Should she fulfill her professional duties, eating regular meals so hunger would not distract her from patients’ critical needs? Or should she honor her religious obligations by observing the fast, a practice considered a “pillar” of Islam?

“I am spending 60-80 hours (at the hospital) and I don’t get to slow down for Ramadan,” Jabbar said. “It felt unfair to my colleagues and patients to tell them to slow down for me.”

At the same time, Jabbar said she feared that fellow Muslims would criticize her if she didn’t fast. “There’s a certain amount of shame when we talk about people not fasting,” she said.

The decision not to fast during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar, is somewhat taboo in the Muslim community.

In Islam, Ramadan commemorates the time when the angel Gabriel imparted the Quran to the Prophet Mohammed.

Many Muslims throughout the world commemorate the month by fasting, refraining from sex and smoking, and dedicating more time than usual to praying and reading the Quran.

Some exceptions are generally allowed during Ramadan, which ends August 8. Pregnant women, travelers and sick people are not expected to observe the fast, for example.

But for many other Muslims, especially first responders and others with stressful jobs, the choice of whether to fast can cause its own kind of anxiety.

When Jabbar blogged about her decision not to fast, she received a mix of reactions.

One Muslim accused her of looking for an “excuse” to shirk her religious duties. Some questioned her devotion to Islam, asking if she performs other required Islamic rituals such as daily prayers.

“Of course I pray," Jabbar said. "I am just choosing not to fast. We have a lot of pressure to demonstrate to our community that we’re Muslim.”

Imam Khalil Abdur-Rashid, head of the Iqra Mosque in Brooklyn and Muslim Chaplain of Columbia University, said that observing the fast during Ramadan is a religious obligation for every Muslim who is considered mature, mentally sane, healthy and not traveling.

There are no fatwas – or religious rulings – that grant fasting exemptions for first responders, he added. But, Abdur-Rashid said, one is definitely needed. In fact, he generated one immediately after speaking with CNN.

"The purpose of the fast is not to place the fasting person in the face of harm, but to teach self-restraint,” Abdur-Rashid said.

“And the moment the fast becomes dangerous, or external conditions place the fasting person in harm's way," he said, "then the fasting person is not only permitted, but in many cases, religiously obliged to break their fast.”

Abdur-Rashid's new fatwa may be especially valuable to Muslims like New Yorker Ahmed Sabree, who battles fires while wearing heavy equipment during the searing summer heat.

Sabree, 42, said the arrival of Ramadan this July took him back to his training days with the New York Fire Department nearly eight years ago.

Sabree endured intense physical drills that included racing up six-story buildings, pulling up hoses and crawling on the floor.

Deputy Chief Mike Jaafar of Wayne County in Michigan is also fasting this year.

Jaafar says Ramadan is “kind of a cool time,” but he doesn’t mean temperature.

In fact, for the last several years, Ramadan has fallen during the hottest summer months. The holy month is calculated by a lunar, rather than fixed calendar, so it rotates from year to year.

“Unfortunately, I can’t adjust my schedule in the profession I am in. This year is going to be a tough one,” Jaafar said. He is expected to keep the same long hours and fulfill the same duties as his fellow officers.

But there are some perks to celebrating Ramadan in Michigan, home to the largest concentration of American Muslims in the United States. When the holy month comes around, fasting isn’t much of a foreign concept, even for those not Muslim.

This understanding translates into small workarounds for Jaafar. Sometimes, if he begins his workday early enough, he is able to finish in time to get home for dinner.

“My hours can be flexible, and usually I can break my fast with family,” Jaafar said. He uses this time to visit his mother every day and to attend the mosque with his children.

As for Jabbar, the medical resident is trying to make up for not fasting through other spiritually fulfilling options, such as praying and helping heal her patients.

“Spirituality has to become part of my clinical practice, because I spend so much time of my life there,” she said.

But Jabbar said she still misses the slowing down that Ramadan's daytime fasting requires.

"I am trying to make it up in terms of remembrance," of God, she said. "It doesn’t always feel sufficient."

soundoff(647 Responses)

If people choose to not believe in any sort of religious ideology, they should be respectful of those who do, and not use every comment section on an article about faith to bash other people's beliefs. It's disgusting, and doesn't inspire any sort of positive response.

The sort of viciousness being used to hurt other people for their religious beliefs in these comments isn't exactly going to win any arguments either. You can't win someone over by telling them their god is just like the tooth fairy. And you're certainly not going to "convert" anyone in a comment section.

Let people who care about the topic of the article comment about it. If you want to tell everyone about why you don't believe in God, have some common decency and create your own blog about it, or restrict your comments to articles that specifically address the faith vs science argument.

You said, "anyway guys, just remember to read quran for one time, hope you find the right way"
I found it. I shed all that nonsense when I shed my belief in imaginary creatures.

August 10, 2013 at 11:00 pm |

R.M. Goodswell

@Mahmoud

who made the human body and the human mind
who made this "billions of galaxies"
who made the Components of the small Insects like the Ant ..
all of that made by natural or haphazard ?!!!!

Odin The All Father did all this. Not Allah...Allah is not real. Odin did it all......no matter what you say it will fall on deaf ears, Odin forbids any deviance from his plan.

1. who made the human body and the human mind? a long process involving something call TIME that most people on this planet apparently cannot understand. We are only the latest adaptions of but a single line of hominids.

2.who made this "billions of galaxies"? who? who?.... it is most likely an endless cycle – this universe is beyond imagining in size, the exponents on the numbers themselves become hard to visualize in anyway...our own little arm of our galaxy contains hundreds of thousands of stars...our Voyager probes are just now leaving the outer edge of our solar system – after 35 years moving at 35000 mph.

3 .who made the Components of the small Insects like the Ant ..all of that made by natural or haphazard ?!!!!
Allah made all of this so we can contemplate and believe on him -because no one can do all of that except him.

this last statement is THE problem...I could explain the many problems with your God, and it would all be for not, You are to afraid to question. You believe as you do because of where you were born....if you had been born elsewhere you'd have a completely different god, completely different rule set.

August 9, 2013 at 8:17 am |

R.M. Goodswell

blown reply...

August 9, 2013 at 8:17 am |

Mahmoud

As i understand you believe in god, but you don't believe in Allah, Right ?

August 10, 2013 at 3:34 pm |

Mahmoud

so long process involving time created us, created all of our components without mistake.
so all of us living now with water and food, that long process give it to us.

August 10, 2013 at 3:46 pm |

Mahmoud

Read the quran, and read the other books, and you definitely will know which one of them is words from god.

You said, "Read the quran, and read the other books, and you definitely will know which one of them is words from god."
Of course, but I don't even need to read the books to know. Your god is no more likely to exist than the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny (sorry, I'm unfamiliar with imaginary creatures from other parts of the world). It didn't write, or even inspire, any books. Only the delusion of it, did.

August 10, 2013 at 10:49 pm |

Mahmoud

so you are going to read the quran :)
just read it, no human can write something like it

You said, "sorry, I mean allah who said the words, abu bakr who ordered to write it."
That's a distinction without a difference. You think there was a god involved in the creation of your fairy tale. Since there are very likely no such creatures, that is highly unlikely.

You said, "anyway you should read it, it's important matter."
Nah, I'm not all that interested in fairy tales.

If you want to convince me to read it, you will first have to convince me that your imaginary friend isn't imaginary.

August 10, 2013 at 11:22 pm |

Mahmoud

I wrote many comments about why god is exist ,I thought you have read them.

You said, "I wrote many comments about why god is exist ,I thought you have read them."
I didn't. Care to repeat, or point me to them?

Are they something like: "Look at the Universe! How could something so awe inspiring not be the work of my imaginary friend?"

August 10, 2013 at 11:34 pm |

Mahmoud

so who create this universe :)
i'm going to copy some of what i've wrote
"who made the human body and the human mind
who made this "billions of galaxies"
who made the Components of the small Insects like the Ant ..
all of that made by natural or haphazard ?!!!!
all of that made by natural or haphazard ?!!!!
Allah made all of this so we can contemplate and believe on him -because no one can do all of that except him."

As expected, an argument from ignorance. Just because you can't understand the natural causes doesn't mean your imaginary friend had anything to do with it.

Anyway, if you believe your imaginary friend did this, then tell me, where does this friend of yours reside? Where did it come from? Who created it? Why did it wait 13.7 billion years after it created the universe to create man? Why did it create a universe as vast as it is for a life form as insignificant as us humans?

Also, what is the color of its eyes? How many toes does it have? Why would it have any?

What is made "perfectly?" And by whose definition of "perfect" are we going by? The Universe by nature is both chaotic and ordered, completely without evidence of intelligent design.

We know that the Hebrew god does not exist. Because of this, we know the Christian and Muslim gods do not exist as they are both loosely based on the Hebrew god with a multiple personality disorder.

None of the deities that man has invented have enough intelligence to make a twitter account. Why would we be expected to believe that a being lacking in any intelligence would be capable of creating such a large expanse of space and time to include everything in it? The known Universe is estimated to be 93 billion light years in diameter. There are billions of galaxies, each containing millions to billions of stars. A countless number of these stars have orbiting planets, many of which could very well be like our own. Why would a god create that much crap all for a species of animal that will likely never step foot outside of its solar system? It doesn't make sense, and the question can't be answered because it simply isn't true.

If an intelligent designer exists, humans are most definitely not and end result. If anything, we might be classified as a primitive, self-destructive species of mediocre intelligence at best. An intelligent designer if one existed would scoff at the gods humans have invented and would take great insult at being labeled as such an incompetent fool.

August 8, 2013 at 9:16 am |

Mahmoud

@ HUGH J. E. RECHTSHUN
first : i can't speak english very well .. so, try to understand me :)
who made the human body and the human mind
who made this "billions of galaxies"
who made the Components of the small Insects like the Ant ..
all of that made by natural or haphazard ?!!!!
Allah made all of this so we can contemplate and believe on him
because no one can do all of that except him

August 9, 2013 at 2:39 am |

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that

Proof?

August 9, 2013 at 2:50 am |

Mahmoud

you mean you want a proof that Allah is the god and Islam is the right religion, Am i right ?

August 9, 2013 at 1:17 pm |

Reality

Once again we come to save 1.3 billion lost Muslims from their Three B Syndrome, i.e. Bred, Born and Brainwashed in Islam but this time reducing the Five Steps for Deprogramming Islam to One Step in order to by-pass most of the language barrier:

Gabriel never existed!!!!!! No Gabriel, no communiques from heaven and therefore Islam has no foundation!!!

if you are dissatisfied, please leave. don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

August 6, 2013 at 3:53 pm |

sly

Why would I leave when us progressive and tolerant people are taking over this nation? We've related the Party of Hate (GOP) to less than 20%. We finally ended 200+ years of White Man Rule, and we have a President who for now has ended the constant American genocide (30 nations bombed in 35 years).

Besides, I live in one of the most beautiful places in America, make $250,000, and I'm not exposed to American haters much – you know, those that diss on hispanics and Muslims and Asians and blacks and liberals and women and Jews and ... well ... most of the haters on here diss on anyone not White, and not of German heritage.

August 6, 2013 at 3:57 pm |

Rico

Do you think people in other countries are really that much better?

August 7, 2013 at 10:22 pm |

Dyslexic doG

it upsets me that muslims loudly proclaim that their religion is a "religion of peace". the world is in fear of muslims!!! millions of people a year – muslim and non-muslim alike -are killed by muslim hatred! how much evidence can you ignore and still spout the "religion of peace" line?!?!

aren't peaceful muslims incensed at the violent thugs who have hijacked their religion? aren't good muslims incensed at the misogyny that blights their religion? Why are peaceful muslims not fighting these cancerous tumors in their religion with every breath? Perhaps one day islam could be a religion of peace but it certainly isn't now.

August 6, 2013 at 2:31 pm |

sly

"Millions" of people are killed by Muslims hatred?

Wow ... you need some medications for your dylexia.

I'm guessing several thousand people have died over the past 5 years due to 'Muslim hatred'. Kinda pales in comparison to 500,000 dying over America's claim of WMD's.

Oh well ... some of y'all haters like to pretend you live in a different Earth than all the rest of us humans.

August 6, 2013 at 2:36 pm |

Dyslexic doG

get to know some of the world's muslim conflict zones, particularly in africa and the middle east, and you'll see just how naïve you are.

August 6, 2013 at 3:58 pm |

Reality

Our War on Terror and Aggression:

An update (or how we are spending or how we have spent the USA taxpayers’ money to eliminate global terror and aggression)

The terror and aggression via a Partial and Recent and Not So Recent Body Count

As the koranic/mosque driven acts of terror and horror continue:

The Muslim Conquest of India – 11th to 18th century

■"The likely death toll is somewhere between 2 million and 80 million. The geometric mean of those two limits is 12.7 million. "

and the 19 million killed in the Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C by Muslims.

and more recently

1a) 179 killed in Mumbai/Bombay, 290 injured

1b) Assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Theo Van Gogh

2) 9/11, 3000 mostly US citizens, 1000’s injured

3) The 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq, US troops killed in action, 3,480 and 928 in non combat roles. Iraqi civilians killed as of 05/10/2013/, 113,249-123,978 mostly due to suicide bombers, land mines and bombs of various types, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

4) Kenya- In Nairobi, about 212 people were killed and an estimated 4000 injured; in Dar es Salaam, the attack killed at least 11 and wounded 85.[2]

5) Bali-in 2002-killing 202 people, 164 of whom were foreign nationals, and 38 Indonesian citizens. A further 209 people were injured.

6) Bali in 2005- Twenty people were killed, and 129 people were injured by three bombers who killed themselves in the attacks.

9) The execution of an eloping couple in Afghanistan on 04/15/2009 by the Taliban.

10) – Afghanistan: US troops 1,385 killed in action, 273 killed in non-combat situations as of 09/15/2011. Over 40,000 Afghan civilians killed due to the dark-age, koranic-driven Taliban acts of horror

11) The killing of 13 citizen soldiers at Ft. Hood by a follower of the koran.

13) The May 28, 2010 attack on a Islamic religious minority in Pakistan, which have left 98 dead,

14) Lockerbie is known internationally as the site where, on 21 December 1988, the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed as a result of a terrorist bomb. In the United Kingdom the event is referred to as the Lockerbie disaster, the Lockerbie bombing, or simply Lockerbie. Eleven townspeople were killed in Sherwood Crescent, where the plane's wings and fuel tanks plummeted in a fiery explosion, destroying several houses and leaving a huge crater, with debris causing damage to a number of buildings nearby. The 270 fatalities (259 on the plane, 11 in Lockerbie) were citizens of 21 nations.

15 The daily suicide and/or roadside and/or mosque bombings in the terror world of Islam.

16) Bombs sent from Yemen by followers of the koran which fortunately were discovered before the bombs were detonated.

17) The killing of 58 Christians in a Catholic church in one of the latest acts of horror and terror in Iraq.

19) A Pakistani minister, who had said he was getting death threats because of his stance against the country's controversial blasphemy law, was shot and killed Wednesday, 3/2/2011

20) two American troops killed in Germany by a recently radicalized Muslim, 3/3/2011

21) the kidnapping and apparent killing of a follower of Zoraster in the dark world of Islamic Pakistan.

22) Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN 3/30/2011) - Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl. Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public. Hena dropped after 70 and died a week later.

23) "October 4, 2011, 100 die as a truck loaded with drums of fuel exploded Tuesday at the gate of compound housing several government ministries on a busy Mogadishu street. It was the deadliest single bombing carried out by the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group in Somalia since their insurgency began. "

o 24) Mon Jun 4, 2012 10:18am EDT
o
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A suicide bomber detonated an explosive-packed car outside a Shi'ite Muslim office in central Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 190 in an attack bearing the hallmarks of Iraq's al Qaeda affiliate.
The bombing on a Shi'ite religious office comes at a sensitive time, with the country's fractious Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs locked in a crisis that threatens to unravel their power-sharing deal and spill into sectarian tensions."

25) BURGAS, Bulgaria | Thu Jul 19, 2012 11:27am EDT

(Reuters) – A suicide bomber carried out an attack that killed seven people in a bus transporting Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, the interior minister said on Thursday, and Israel said Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants were to blame.

27) Boston Marathon horror – April 2013, four dead, hundreds injured and maimed for life. A
Continued below:

Other elements of our War on Terror and Aggression:

-Operation Iraqi Freedom- The 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq, US Troops killed in action, 3,480 and 928 in non combat roles as of 09/15/2011/, 102,522 – 112,049 Iraqi civilians killed as of 9/16/2011/, mostly due http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

– Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan: US troops 1,385 killed in action, 273 killed in non-combat situations as of 09/15/2011. Over 40,000 Afghan civilians killed mostly due to the dark-age, koranic-driven Taliban acts of horror,

– Sa-dd-am, his sons and major he-nchmen have been deleted. Sa-dd-am's bravado about WMD was one of his major mistakes. Kuwait was saved.

– Iran is being been contained. (beside containing the Sunni-Shiite civil war in Baghdad, that is the main reason we are in Iraq. And yes, essential oil continues to flow from the region.)

– North Korea is still u-ncivil but is contained.

– Northern Ireland is finally at peace.

– The Jews and Palestinians are being separated by walls. Hopefully the walls will follow the 1948 UN accords. Unfortunately the Annapolis Peace Conference was not successful. And unfortunately the recent events in Gaza has put this situation back to “squ-are one”. And this significant stupidity is driven by the mythical foundations of both religions!!!

– – Fa-na–tical Islam has basically been contained to the Middle East but a wall between India and Pakistan would be a plus for world peace. Ditto for a wall between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

– Timothy McVeigh was exe-cuted. Terry Nichols escaped the death penalty twice because of deadlocked juries. He was sentenced to 161 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole,[3][7] and is incarcerated in ADX Florence, a super maximum security prison near Florence, Colorado. He shares a cellblock that is commonly referred to as "Bombers Row" with Ramzi Yousef and Ted Kaczynski

– Eric Ru-dolph is spending three life terms in pri-son with no par-ole.

– Jim Jones, David Koresh, Kaczynski, the "nuns" from Rwanda, and the KKK were all dealt with and either eliminated themselves or are being punished.

– Islamic Sudan, Dar-fur and So-malia are still terror hot spots.
– The terror and tor-ture of Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Kuwait were ended by the proper application of the military forces of the USA and her freedom-loving friends. Ra-dovan Karadzic was finally captured on 7/23/08 and is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the law of war – charges related to the 1992-1995 civil war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina's secession from Yugoslavia.

The capture of Ratko Mladić: (Serbian Cyrillic: Ратко Младић, pronounced [râtkɔ mlǎːditɕ], born 12 March 1943[1][2]) is an accused war criminal and a former Bosnian Serb military leader. On May 31, 2011, Mladić was extradited to The Hague, where he was processed at the detention center that holds suspects for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).[3] His trial began on 3 June 2011.

– the bloody terror brought about by the Ja-panese, Na-zis and Co-mmunists was with great difficulty eliminated by the good guys.

– Bin Laden was executed for crimes against humanity on May 1, 2011

– Ditto for Anwar al-Awlaki on September 30, 2011

– Ditto for Abu Yahya al-Libi on June 5, 2012

August 7, 2013 at 8:11 am |

Reality

In comparison to:

o WHERE WAS YOUR GOD(S) WHEN THE FOLLOWING TOOK PLACE:

The Twenty Worst Things GOD'S CREATURES Have Done to Each Other:

M. White, http://necrometrics.com/warstatz.htm#u (required reading)

The Muslim Conquest of India

"The likely death toll is somewhere between 2 million and 80 million. The geometric mean of those two limits is 12.7 million. "

The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.